About Jenny Perkel
I qualified as a clinical psychologist in 1996 and am registered with both the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) in the United Kingdom and the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA). During three decades of clinical practice, I have accumulated more than 20,000 hours of psychotherapy experience.
For much of my career, I specialised in supporting the psychological wellbeing of babies, children and families. That work gave me a deep appreciation of how our earliest relationships and experiences shape emotional development and continue to influence us throughout life. Although my practice has evolved and I now work predominantly online with adolescents and adults, those years remain central to the way I understand each person’s story, bringing a developmental perspective to the work we do together. I am interested in the ways in which we are shaped and influenced, not only by our biology, genetics and early history, but also by relationships, context, culture, online engagement and the wider world in which we live.
Today I work with anyone experiencing psychological distress, including anxiety, depression, burnout, the effects of autism and ADHD, and the many uncertainties that accompany being human. Alongside adult psychotherapy, I continue to offer parent therapy for families experiencing difficulties with babies, children or adolescents. Perinatal mental health, including postnatal depression and anxiety, remains one of my longstanding areas of specialist interest. I also provide clinical supervision for psychologists, psychotherapists and counsellors. My professional online training covers psychotherapy, the ethics of AI therapy, child psychology, infant mental health, child psychiatric diagnosis, and the relationship between genetics and mental health. I am the author of Babies in Mind and Children in Mind, I serve on the editorial board of the academic journal, Psychoanalytic Practice, and have published extensively for both mental health professionals and the general public.
How I think about therapy
Psychology has evolved considerably since I began my career, and I have seen different therapeutic approaches develop and, at times, give way to new ways of thinking. Research continues to deepen and shift our understanding of mental health, and every therapeutic model has something valuable to contribute. Yet no single theory can fully capture the richness and complexity of a human life. Over the years, I have come to believe that people do not need to be fitted into a particular model. Rather, they need to be deeply understood. My aim is to see each person as clearly and thoughtfully as possible, creating a space where you can discover the authentic self that may have become hidden beneath expectations, roles or ways of coping over time.
The stories we inherit – and the stories we come to tell ourselves – can either keep us confined or open up new possibilities for living. Sometimes, discovering a different way of understanding our experiences can itself be profoundly therapeutic. For this reason, my practice is integrative rather than tied to any single therapeutic model. I draw on psychodynamic psychotherapy, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT), mindfulness-based approaches, developmental psychology, and narrative therapy. I see these not as competing schools of thought, but as complementary perspectives that help us understand the complexity of being human. I try to find the approach that best serves each individual.